7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

San Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with breaching the
terms of her house arrest. In August she was convicted and
sentenced to three years in prison, though the sentence
immediately was reduced to 18 months, and she was allowed
to serve it while remaining under house arrest.

Vladimir Putin

(b. Oct. 7, 1952, Leningrad, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg, Russia])

V

ladimir Putin has been the leading figure in Russia
since 1999, serving as the country’s prime minister in
1999, as its president from New Year’s Eve 1999 to 2008,
and again as prime minister since 2008.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin studied law at Leningrad
State University, where his tutor was Anatoly Sobchak,
later one of the leading reform politicians of the perestroika
period. Putin served 15 years as a foreign intelligence offi-
cer for the KGB (Committee for State Security), including
six years in Dresden, East Germany (now Germany). In
1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of
lieutenant colonel and returned to Russia to become pro-
rector of Leningrad State University with responsibility
for the institution’s external relations. Soon afterward,
Putin became an adviser to Sobchak, the first democrati-
cally elected mayor of St. Petersburg. He quickly won
Sobchak’s confidence and became known for his ability to
get things done. By 1994 he had risen to the post of first
deputy mayor.
In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow, where he joined the
presidential staff as deputy to Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin’s
chief administrator. Putin grew close to fellow Leningrader
Anatoly Chubais and moved up in administrative posi-
tions. In July 1998 President Boris Yeltsin made Putin
director of the Federal Security Service (the KGB’s domes-
tic successor), and shortly thereafter he became secretary